2 years ago this now when a number of places got some sizeable snowfalls. It started here on the Monday evening of the 4th when the first snow showers moved in from the Irish Sea. By the early hours, heavy showers of snow were streaming in and snow depths were rapidly increasing. The conurabations of Liverpool and Manchester woke up to a winter wonderland with the Greater Manchester area having one of the biggest snowfalls for years, it was chaos!

I remember coming down from Cleadon (Tyne and Wear) to Norwich on the train on the 5th January. Cleadon got just a dusting from the front that moved south overnight 4th/5th, but sizeable falls from North Sea convection shortly afterwards as the wind veered north-easterly. The front pepped up over Yorkshire and was in the process of giving sizeable snowfalls as I passed through the region. The frontal snowfalls missed East Anglia altogether, with very little snow around Peterborough but an inch around Norwich from snow showers on preceding days.

15cm here through 5th into 6th with a start of 1cm at 0900 clock time on the 5th
I thought that was a lot of snow until the next winter
30Nov 1730-0830 1Dec=35cm!
The record, as far as I know for this area, certainly in 60 years, no idea before 1943 though.

I no longer have a web page

please take care with sunbathing-it can give problems years down the line with skin cancer as I discovered

2 years ago this now when a number of places got some sizeable snowfalls. It started here on the Monday evening of the 4th when the first snow showers moved in from the Irish Sea. By the early hours, heavy showers of snow were streaming in and snow depths were rapidly increasing. The conurabations of Liverpool and Manchester woke up to a winter wonderland with the Greater Manchester area having one of the biggest snowfalls for years, it was chaos!

I lived in Ordsall Lane, salford then, brilliant memories and went some way to making up for feb 1st 2009 when everywhere 8 miles east took a pasting and salford had one short heavy shower on the sunday and 18 hours of sleety drizzle, that said, i cant help feeling i wish i had moved here 2 years earlier, some places around here had 5 foot drifts in the 2010 event and a foot of level snow in 09 and 10, i cant help feeling i may of missed the boat now and we will soon be back into Atlantic winters with solar output increasing, even then though, i have seen scenes the last couple of years i had long given up on ever seeing again.

Here is what i would have experienced had i moved here 1 year earlier. Clip from January 2010.

I already had 8cm lying on the ground (mainly from snow showers on December 18th) but on Monday 5th i awoke at 5am for work and checked the radar to see the front looking pretty heavy just about approaching York. I had been fairly excited as forecasts on here for Yorkshire were around the 10cm mark which is fairly decent.

As it happened, snow started in LS27 at 06:15 and by 06:45 accumulations on roads were present as the snow was moderate to heavy, as the day went on it became apparent that the front had pivoted north of the forecast location as i got 21cm of fresh snow over a 10 hour period.

This was the biggest single snowfall i had ever seen (there was bigger in 1995 or 1997) and led to my record depth of 29cm, in addition to this i had 31 days of lying snow.

I already had 8cm lying on the ground (mainly from snow showers on December 18th) but on Monday 5th i awoke at 5am for work and checked the radar to see the front looking pretty heavy just about approaching York. I had been fairly excited as forecasts on here for Yorkshire were around the 10cm mark which is fairly decent.

As it happened, snow started in LS27 at 06:15 and by 06:45 accumulations on roads were present as the snow was moderate to heavy, as the day went on it became apparent that the front had pivoted north of the forecast location as i got 21cm of fresh snow over a 10 hour period.

This was the biggest single snowfall i had ever seen (there was bigger in 1995 or 1997) and led to my record depth of 29cm, in addition to this i had 31 days of lying snow.

Was the 18th december snow still lying then? i thought it got washed away on boxing day and mild muck made its way all the way up to scotland, i may be wrong but didnt we get a reload after exmas?

Im sure i got rain from that cold front then as it moved south the cold air caught up turning it to snow then it stalled over the manchester/ liverpool area lol one of the most frustrating days of my life! haha

2014/15 Snow

13th January - 10 minutes of light snow, didnt settle

16th January - Snow/hail showers, very small accumulations melted between the showers

The 5th Jan 2010 event was a bit frustrating for these parts. We saw 2-3 inches in the early hours, but nothing more, thanks to the front making a swift passage through Cumbria, but then seeing it become slow moving just 40 miles to our south over central lancs was a stroke of bad luck. Alas it delivered close to a foot in some parts of central/southern lancashire and greater manchester area. Cold fronts moving down across the country don't tend to pep up as they move southwards but normally weaken substantially but on occasion can hang around southern england for a while. The cold front was wrapped around a developing shallow low feature which helped the front to become very slow moving and erratic in its movement.

Had it behaved in a similiar way over SW Scotland then Cumbria would have been caked in the white stuff with local topography coming into play and pepping up the intensity of the snowfall even more so. Alas its not often lancashire and manchester do better than us from snowfall associated from a cold front moving down from the NW.

The event itself couldn't have been timed better depending on how you look at things (not good for emergency services and economy generally or children's education), the first week of January generally is a bit of a hard slog for many of us - a good time for hiding indoors, many schools closed for the rest of the week and many people struggled to make it into work, the sub zero temps powder snow and blue skies made it feel like continental Alps, a few superb days followed for winter walking - I could only make the most of the conditions on Sat 8th Jan undertaking a brilliant walk near St Johns in the Vale north of Thirlmere, I have not seen similiar conditions since, yes last december 2010 delivered the cold and blue skies, but the snow was not as deep in these parts and the weekends before christmas are always a bit too busy to make the most of getting outdoors - compared to weekends in january when things are generally much quieter.

Here's hoping we see another few days like those between 3-9 Jan 10 this winter - I'd be happy if we saw just one week of similiar weather even if the rest of the winter remainded mild and wet. I suspect we will have a good crack early-mid February still early enough for the snow to remain deep and crisp with the effects of the sun being quite limited still, by late Feb such conditions would be much harder to sustain.